A heartbreaking story of a boy abandoned by his own mother for eight days in a cockroach-infested apartment with no water or electricity comes from Moscow, Russia. 10-year-old Mikhail was starved and scared, but he still defended his mother. Namely, when she left the place, she told her boy she would take the dog for a walk, but it wasn’t until eight days later that she finally decided to get back home and check on Mikhail!

He didn’t have anything to eat. There was only dry rice in the house that he couldn’t possibly cook, so he was forced to call for help with the remaining strength. The neighbors heard the cries and managed to lower some food to him from the above balcony, but didn’t call the authorities because Mikhail begged them not to. They, however, waited for another day and then called the police.

The boy was locked up and alone for five days. He was taken to the hospital for a check-up, and his mother returned home three days later, three days after her son was saved. “I can’t imagine how the child survived five days there,” said Dmitry, a neighbor who saw the officers breaking down the door to the filthy apartment. “There are cockroaches everywhere, flies everywhere, and an awful odor.”

Natalya Azarenkova, 31, refused to tell authorities where she had been for eight days or why she had left her son locked and unattended. She now faces prison time and the end of her relationship with Mikhail. However, she believes she is not responsible for endangering her son’s life and was quoted as saying, “I need my son, I want to fix everything.”